Interview: Dave Van Domelen
Transformers is doing spectacularly well as the franchise celebrates its 25th anniversary. One of many 80s brands that waned during the early 90s, it was reinvented in 1996 as Beast Wars to great success, and had a phenomenal year over a decade later with the release of the 2007 movie. In Hasbro CEO Brian Goldner‘s words, “That brand will never be the same.”
Fanmode interviewed long-time Transformers fan and long-time Transformers reviewer (400-plus reviews over 15 years!) Dave Van Domelen to get his thoughts on Transformers and Transformers reviews.
One of the quirkier things of your reviews is you write bios for Transformers that lack them. What would the Dave Van Domelen bio look like?
DVANDOM comes from a rather creative home. Father was a band teacher, mother an English teacher, little brother an artist/athlete/musician and little sister feeling a bit put upon having to follow all of this (although she ended up the first to marry and own a home). DVANDOM himself excelled in just about all academic areas, and ended up with a PhD in Physics from the Ohio State University, but he followed his parents at least in that his specialization was education research. He’s currently the Director of Undergraduate Labs at Kansas State University.
DVANDOM’s TRANSFORMERS fandom was only sporadic at first, getting Bluestreak for Christmas in 1984 and buying the occasional TF over the next few years. It wasn’t until graduate school and the discovery of alt.toys.transformers in 1993 that he really dove into the fandom. From the time new molds started coming out in Generation 2, there’s barely been a TRANSFORMERS mold that he hasn’t bought…and reviewed. Reviewing first on Usenet, and then starting to archive his reviews on the web in January 1996, he runs one of the oldest TRANSFORMERS fan pages out there.
While not physically impressive, he has a keen analytical mind, taking things apart both metaphorically and literally, then putting them back together again. He started modifying toys around 1994, and as a result got used to the sight of his own blood (oops).
STR 3 INT 9 SPD 3 END 5 RNK 8 COUR 5 FRB 2 SKL 9 Avg 5.5
Why Transformers?
The fact it hasn’t died off plays a big part. I’ve gotten just as big into other lines, like War Planets or Mystic Knights of Tir Na Nog, but those died off after a year or so. I like robots in general, and I like stuff with a lot of fiddly bits for analyzing and evaluating. It also helps that I got involved in Transformers communities that I got along with well…as opposed to Gundam, which I own a lot of but almost never review because I’m not really in any Gundam communities. Alt.toys.transformers has helped a lot in the early years, and the AllSpark later on.
Do you mainly find Transformers appealing for their characters, toy designs or a combination of the two?
Definitely a combination, although the toy design tends to dominate. Still, there’s times where I’ll buy a redeco solely because I like the character they’ve put on the toy (i.e. Cybertron Brushguard).
Fans will soon be presented with Transformers designs done in four distinct styles — Universe, Animated, movie and Alternity. Is there a particular style you prefer?
I like Universe and Animated pretty much equally, but don’t much care for the movie aesthetic. That said, I tend to like the non-appearing movie toys (i.e. Landmine) more than the ones that have to try to look like the way they appeared in the movie. And I’m really looking forward to the biplane and forklift toys.
As for Alternity, I’m willing to give it a chance, and will be getting the blue Megatron. If I thought there was a decent chance of Alternity being released stateside, though, I probably wouldn’t drop $50 for a toy that’d likely be half that here.
Why has Transformers endured?
If I had to pick one factor, I think it’d be international licensing and corporate partnership between Takara and Hasbro. This has let the line continue even during lean times in one market by shifting emphasis to another market. If Hasbro’s got trouble selling TFs, Takara picks up the slack. And so forth. With multiple companies interested in maintaining the property, companies with a track record of devouring their rivals to survive, Transformers were never left totally fallow.
And that corporate carnivory is also a big part of it. A lot of lines failed not because of their own lack of merit, but simply because the company that made them couldn’t hack it when the toy market crashed in the late 80s. Hasbro and Takara were the receivers of a lot of intellectual property from dead companies.
Do you find anything lacking in the way either Hasbro or Takara Tomy is handling the franchise?
I think Hasbro may be trying to juggle a few too many lines at once, to be honest. Stores don’t seem interested in expanding shelfspace for TFs beyond a certain point, which means that we’ve already got Universe and Animated toys mixing together on pegs…even allowing for an expansion of shelfspace for the movie, it’s still going to be a mess.
What could either toy company do to further engage the older Transformers fan?
They really shouldn’t aim to engage the older fans. We’re a tiny minority of the primary sales market, horribly splintered in our opinions, and not worth the effort to chase. They should, however, give kids credit for having working brains and avoid dumbing things down. Making the villains all irredeemably evil and the heroes all shiny and good, for instance, on the assumption that kids will be confused by shades of gray. But most kids at the grade school level are capable of recognizing that you can be a jerk and still one of the good guys (i.e. TF:A Bumblebee) or be a bad guy who’s noble (Armada Starscream) or tragic (TF:A Blackarachnia).
Dumbed down stuff doesn’t even appeal to kids a lot of the time, and it turns off the older fans. Treating the main sales base as if they had half a clue will tend to make for a deeper and richer line in general, which will benefit the older fan as a side effect.
Why did you start reviewing Transformers?
I started doing comic reviews in July 1992, a week or so after I got Usenet access. They grew out of the reviews I’d been writing for snailmail letters to a friend of mine who graduated before I did. Having gotten involved in reviewing on Usenet, it was natural to start reviewing
Transformers as well as I started getting into the toys in a big way. I think my first serious TF reviews were in 1994.
How long does a review generally take?
Oh, it varies wildly. The Bumper Battler Soundwave (review) took less than an hour, while watching a DVD. Alternators Smokescreen probably took me five hours spread out over several days. As for longest, it depends on whether you mean “time on task” (20th Anniversary Optimus Prime probably wins that) or “calendar time” (which often can be very long if I get the first figure in a wave weeks or months before the final one).
What do you look for when appraising a Transformer?
Durability, stability in both modes, transformation that’s involved but not frustrating, articulation, whether the gimmick adds to the toy. Where relevant, I also compare to what it’s “supposed to” be.
What criteria do you consider with regards to the alt mode, transformation and robot mode?
Alt mode: Does it hold together? How much articulation does it have, relative to what’s possible for the form (i.e. a beast mode will have higher standards than a car).
Transformation: Did I have to refer to the instructions? Does it hold together during transformation or do parts pop off? Complicated is good, but fussy and frustrating is bad.
Robot mode: Same two criteria as the alt mode, although obviously the demands of articulation are higher.
You’ve often made use of your access to lab tools for your reviews. What’s the most unusual thing you’ve done?
Use a 40x magnifier to read the decals on Alternators Smokescreen. :)
What other action figure lines interest you these days?
I don’t really have anything right now that’s on the same level as Transformers in the sense of going for completism or near-completism, but I dabble in a bunch of stuff. Iron Man figures, the occasional Ben10 and Power Rangers, and I usually give a try to new superhero or SF lines (i.e. I got a Brave and the Bold line Blue Beetle, but don’t plan to get more from that series). Robot Heroes have been a sort of gateway into other chibis for me, though, and I’ve gotten some Superhero Squad and Combat Heroes, plus I expect to get the Brave and the Bold figures in that style.
Mainly, I’m interested in robots and superheroes in general, so I’ll give just about any line featuring them a try.